In this book, the authors, all legal scholars from the tradition of critical race theory start from the experience of injury from racist hate speech and develop a theory of the first amendment that recognizes such injuries. In their critique of "first amendment orthodoxy", the authors argue that only a history of racism can explain why defamation, invasion of privacy and fraud are exempt from free-speech guarantees but racist verbal assault is not.

The authors draw on the experience of injury from racist hate speech to develop a first amendment interpretation that recognizes such injuries, demonstrating how critical race theory can be brought to bear against both conservative and liberal ideology to motivate a regulation of hate speech.